The Empty Room
by Ashura
Summary: (Slash, Bran/Barney, implied sort of Bran/Will.) There's music drifting down the corridor, spilling in the windows, lilting and tender and melancholy, breezy as the air that lifts the curtains and tickles Barney's hair from his face. He thinks it must be


The Empty Room

by Ashura

series: _The Dark is Rising_

pairing: Bran/Barney (sort of Bran/Will)

for jenni

****

I always dreamed I'd love you 

_but I never dreamed I'd lose you_

_in my dreams I'm always strong_

--Mercury Rev, _The Dark is Rising_

Sunbeams make visible the miniature motes of dust in the air, the things Barney used to tell his mother were faeries floating.  There's nothing to be done about them.  He keeps the studio as clean as possible, but there it is.  They only appear when the sun shines through the westward window just so, anyway, and how many sunny days do they really have to contend with in Liverpool?

The studio was Bran's idea.  They were walking through the house with the realty agent, and Bran had been going over a list of things he thought important, and he's asked for a wide-open room with good light for Barney to paint in.  It is one of the little things that make Barney feel like this is all real, that he's not just a replacement for a phantom that's never coming home.  Like Bran's accepted the two of them after all.

It makes him feel warm, and he knows he shouldn't need it, that he's still the one who falls asleep with Bran Davies' breath warm against his neck and soft strands of white hair tickling his face.  He's been sleeping that way for eight years now, and this time they're really buying a house together, rather than sharing rent in one of the ghetto flats they've lived in before.  It's all very official, and Barney likes the security of it.  Bran, he thinks, begins to feel trapped; he was very enthusiastic at first, it was his idea in the beginning, but as the sale and the move progress, his eyes get a flat, hollow sort of look.  Barney's stomach hurts, and he asks Bran one night, holding him naked and damp and wrapped up in him, if he thinks they're getting in too deep.

`

'Of course not,' Bran says sleepily, and nuzzles against his neck.  'You're not going to leave me now, are you?'

And Barney knows such a thing is impossible; he seizes Bran's face and kisses him hard and whispers _you know I'll never leave you_, but the hollowness is still there.

And Barney realises it's not the house that has Bran trapped, it's the whole world.

And maybe asking for a studio was an apology, really, for still keeping the other room, the not-guest-room, the one that Bran's old bed is in, covered with the quilt Will used to sleep under.  Barney doesn't know how Bran got it, and he doesn't ask.  He has added his own contributions to the room over the years, scenes of old castles and twisted trees and mountain-ringed lakes and _light_, and sometimes he's not sure why he goes along with it at all, except that the room is one of Bran's eccentricities, and Barney accepts them because he is Bran's lover.

(Because he is afraid of losing, of fading, of Bran slipping through his fingers as if he had never been.)

Simon has not spoken to Barney since he found out the arrangement with Bran was more than friends or flatmates.  His parents send them each a package at Christmas, but only address the card to Barney.  Jane is the only one who makes an effort, and she visits sometimes, brings a bouquet of whatever flowers are in season makes tea and bustles around the kitchen as if desperate to give it some vacant echo of a woman's presence.   

When she stays over, she does not sleep in Will's room.

Owen Davies has only recently started writing to his son, terse letters in thick handwriting.  He never has anything to say, but Bran reads them anyway, and always answers them, and folds them up and puts them in the top drawer of his desk.  Sometimes when he finishes them he will slide them toward Barney across the ugly green kitchen table and say 'Da says hello,' and Barney will obligingly read through a few short paragraphs of musings on the weather and the behavioural patterns of sheep, and sure enough, there is his name toward the bottom, where the handwriting is always heavier, as if the author were forcing himself to pen it.

He does not come to see them at all, but Bran thinks someday soon he might.

They've gotten in a fight, and Barney can't remember now what it was about.  It can't have been something important, certainly not worth lying alone in a bed too big for him, getting tangled up in the blankets because the air is too cold but the quilt is far too warm, and the mattress and all the pillows are imprinted with the line of two bodies, not one.  

He thinks it might have been about Simon.

The red LED numbers on the alarm clock blink brazenly at him, twelve noon, or midnight maybe, even though it's not either.  They never get around to setting it, and Barney's not sure why, except that an artist and a writer have no schedules to keep.  And he gets the idea that time is meaningless in Bran's world anyway. 

Eight years, after all, cannot possibly compare to a week at Halloween, and the single summer after.

He knows where Bran has gone, he knew even before he heard the footsteps down the corridor and the thump of the door.  What he's less sure of is why—if Bran knows how much it rips Barney up inside, if that's why he does it when they fight, if he doesn't know at all, if he just wants to escape.  

He kicks off the blankets, pushes himself up on his elbows.  The blinking of the clock flashes pulsing crimson through the room, illuminates it barely, like the light of a bomb or a fire.  _How morbid._  The collar of his t-shirt is rough against his skin, the hems of his shorts chafe the inside of his legs.  The floor is cold when his bare feet touch it.

Down the corridor, rough floorboards, the creak of the worn spot in one of the boards.  The door to Will's room, a barrier far more formidable than a simple wooden slab and some hinges.  He eases it open, peers inside.  It's not so dark as their room, the light from the streetlamp outside streams weak and sallow through the pale blue curtains.  (Bran says that remembering Will always makes him think of blue, so blue it is.)  There is Bran's lap harp and a few scattered pages of music, a battered armchair Barney thought they'd gotten rid of two flats ago, a bookcase half-filled with second-hand adventure novels and old literature textbooks.  A patrol of meticulously painted pewter miniatures stand sentry on the top shelf, and Barney remembers painting them, laughing over the kitchen table, with Bran prowling about trying to dab paint on his nose.  

And there is Bran, then, half huddled beneath Will's old quilt, fingers wrapped tight around the hem of it, his eyes squeezed shut far too tight to really believe that he's asleep.

'Come back to bed,' Barney says softly, and it seems like his voice echoes in this room.

A long pause, so long he almost thinks he's mistaken and Bran really is asleep.  Then, softly:  'I need to stay here tonight…I'm sorry.'

And Barney looks down at him clutching at the worn old blue patchwork quilt, hiding beneath it like a child who believes it can protect him from monsters, only there aren't any monsters here, juts Barney and a ghost that will never go away.

'He's gone, Bran,' he says, and it doesn't come out harsh really, just weary and resigned and lost.  'He's not going to come back, not going to sleep here again.  Not ever.  I'm sorry.  It's true.'

Another silence, and he wonders if he's gone too far.  But Bran's eyes are bright gold when he opens them and looks at him, calm and quiet.

'There was something,' he says, 'and I've nearly forgotten it.  If I don't wait for him, I'll lose all of it.'

'You're not making any sense,' says Barney, hurt and harsh, and goes back to bed alone.

When Bran says he's sorry about the fight, he does it hungrily, wildly, tangled up in Barney's arms, and there are dark purple places on his skin when they're finished.  He pulls Barney over him, eyes closed, lips parted, and offers his body in recompense, his pants and moans and scattered breaths.  

'I love you,' Barney tells him, pressing him down into the mattress.

Bran grins, lazy and slow, and rolls them over, long white fingers tight around Barney's wrists.  'Mm. Prove it.'

Barney laughs, and kisses him hard.

Dust mites dancing in sunbeams in the studio windows.  Barney's not satisfied with the picture, it reminds him too much of something one would see in a hotel room, and that's never been his style.  This isn't his style at all, but he's experimenting, and for some reason he'd been thinking about Trewissick, and the fishing boats in the harbour.  The first sketches were good, but he can't quite seem to make the final product match the picture in his mind.  It frustrates him.

There's music drifting down the corridor, spilling in the windows, lilting and tender and melancholy, breezy as the air that lifts the curtains and tickles Barney's hair from his face.  Bran is at the harp, and he puts his palette and brushes down for a while to listen, leaning against the doorframe, colour-spattered fingers toying with the frayed cuffs of his smock.  

He thinks it must be summer.

Barney doesn't usually dust Will's room, he doesn't usually go in it at all.  It's not there for him.  But Bran is gone this week, at some conference talking about writing and signing copies of his last book, and Barney's at a bit of a loss without him.  He makes too much food for supper, opens a bottle of wine he should be able to finish but does anyway, falls asleep in the recliner with his clothes wrinkled and his teeth fuzzy.  

The next day he cleans everything.

Will's room is stuck in time, he thinks, leaning against the doorframe with a dust-cloth in his hand.  It's a child's room—small bed, old quilt, mismatched furniture.  The breeze blows the curtains away from the window, the sill wet with yesterday's rain.  The room is Will's, but the essence of it is entirely Bran, all those parts of Bran that he can't bear to carry with him and yet can't let go of.  And Barney has this epiphany, a revelation, he realises suddenly what it must have been like for Bran, lonely on his mountain, when he first met Will.  How his world must have changed.

He has no idea of the extent of it, of course, because he can't remember.  But it's enough.

'Why'd you leave him?' he asks the empty air, but he knows the answer well enough.  A rainstorm, a too-young driver, a car crash.  Barney knows, he remembers the funeral.  He remembers Bran's face, eyes hidden behind dark glasses even inside to hide the tears that glistened in them.  The way his hands held each other, as if he were wishing one of them were—

And twelve years later, Bran still doesn't believe it's real.

And when the breeze through the window kisses the back of his neck, and there's the faint scent of daffodils from the garden below, and Barney feels, for a moment, as if he could turn around and see a brown-haired boy sprawled out on the bed, pushing his hair out of his eyes, suddenly he's not so sure himself.

He changes his mind about dusting, and closes the door behind him when he goes.

Breathe life into this feeble heart 

_lift this mortal veil of fear_

_take this crumbled hopes etched with tears_

_we'll rise above these earthly cares_

_cast your eyes on the ocean_

_cast your soul to the sea_

_when the dark night seems endless_

_please remember me_

--Loreena McKennit, _Dante's Prayer_

[fin.]

HoH 


End file.
